If you want to see how not to kick off your new business, you need to look at Innodyn aircraft engines.  I first became acquainted with Innodyn in 2004 when they offered a turbo shaft airplane engine for the cost of a piston engine.  For those of you who aren’t pilots, that means the engine will last 3 – 4 times as long, be as much as 25 times more reliable, and it will be cheaper to repair or rebuild when the time comes — all for the same price as a marginally (some would say questionably) reliable piston engine.  Sign me up!  That sounds great.  I want one — yesterday.

Those of you who know me know that I’m heavily into experimental aircraft.  I’ve been waiting to build just the right airplane for three years (I’m still waiting on Innodyn so my dream airplane can have just the perfect engine.)  Innodyn said in mid 2004 they would be in full production by the end of the year (2004.)  Well, in the spring of 2005 they said it would be fall of 2005.  No news in the fall of 2005.  Then in the spring of 2006 they said things would be underway by 2007.  In the spring of 2007 they said by late 2007 they’d have all their problems sorted out and be in production.  That was the last news release from the company.  They still have their website, with all the glowing reports, all the dreams for the future, spoken as if it were all reality today.  But no new news.  Hidden at the bottom of one of the pages is a note in the small print that says, “Call if you would like info on our current status.”  Only a die-hard like me would have even found that.  It was intentionally buried.

Safe to say after nearly 5 years of waiting for the miracle around the corner, I’ve decided to go with a piston engine (what other choice to I have at this point?)  But I think there’s a lesson to be learned here.  When you make an announcement of a new product, new service, new whatever, you’d better be ready to go.  You’d better be sure there are no hitches and no glitches.  You’d better hit the ground running for your life and never look back.

I know most of the people who were originally interested in Innodyn were gone when they found out the product wasn’t ready the day they heard about it.  I should have done that.  Some of the more optimistic potential buyers hung on longer.  Perhaps there is someone hungrier for this product (or, some would say, more gullible) than me that are hanging on even yet.  I doubt it.  In the aviation community, this company has no credibility.  In many ways, they are the laughing stock of the aviation industry.  People probably wouldn’t buy from them now even if the product miraculously found it’s way into the market.  Buyers are leery of a company that promised the sun, moon and stars so many times and failed to deliver each and every time.  How can you have confidence in what they say and do, after all?

So a company, with an innovative, spectacular product that potentially completely re-defines the aviation industry is — for all intents and purposes — dead before it has taken it’s first breath of life.  And that because they didn’t have their ducks lined up when they started.  There’s a lesson here.  Hopefully you’ll learn this one from someone else’s mistakes, and not from your own.